What an SEO audit report should include
Five parts, in this order:
- One-page summary. What you checked, the date range, and the top 3 to 5 findings ranked by lost or available clicks. One line each.
- Finding cards. One card per finding (template below). Only findings that cost traffic or block it.
- Quick wins list. Small fixes under one hour each, in a simple table.
- Not a problem (on purpose). Things that look scary but are fine, like 404s for deleted pages or "Alternate page with proper canonical tag". This saves the reader from panic and from paying someone to "fix" them.
- How we will measure. The exact Search Console view you will re-check, and when.
The finding card template
Copy this for each finding:
| Field | What to write |
|---|---|
| Finding | One sentence, plain words. "Our 12 service pages are blocked from Google." |
| Evidence | The number and where it came from. "Indexing > Pages: 12 URLs listed under URL marked 'noindex'. Screenshot attached." |
| Impact | Clicks lost or at stake, with the date range. "These pages got 2,300 clicks in the 3 months before Sept 4." |
| Cause | What caused it, if known. "Theme update on Sept 4 turned on 'noindex' for the Services post type." |
| Fix | The change, concrete enough to do. "Turn off noindex for Services in the SEO plugin. Request indexing for the 12 URLs." |
| Owner and effort | Who and how long. "Web developer, 30 minutes." |
| How we will know | The check and the date. "Indexing > Pages count for these URLs back to Indexed within 2 weeks. Clicks back within 4 to 6 weeks." |
| Priority | P1 (blocks traffic), P2 (costs traffic), P3 (hygiene). |
Worked example (fictional site)
brightsmile-dental.com, audit of October 2026, data: last 3 months vs previous 3 months. Summary. Non-branded clicks fell 31%. Three findings explain most of it: 1. P1: Service pages set to noindex by a theme update (12 pages, about 2,300 clicks in the prior 3 months). 2. P2: "Teeth whitening cost" page holds position 3 but CTR fell from 11% to 5%. An AI Overview now shows prices above it. 3. P2: Mobile LCP is Poor on all location pages (hero video, 4.8 s). Not a problem: 41 "Not found (404)" URLs are old blog tags deleted on purpose. 18 "Page with redirect" URLs are the old /services-old/ paths. Both are expected. Measure: re-check Indexing > Pages on Oct 28 and Performance (non-branded, same comparison) on Nov 25.
Notice what is missing: no "domain authority" score, no list of 90 warnings from a crawler, no generic advice. Every line is a number from Google, a fix and a date.
Rules that get fixes approved
- Rank by clicks, not by issue count. One noindex mistake on 12 money pages beats 400 missing alt texts.
- Use Google's data as evidence. Screenshots from Search Console end debates. Tool scores start them.
- Separate branded and non-branded clicks. Search Console has a branded filter since late 2025 (Performance > Search results > Add filter > Query). Branded clicks can hide a real drop.
- Say what is fine. A "not a problem" section builds trust and stops wasted work.
- Put a date on every "how we will know". Indexing fixes show in days to weeks. Ranking changes can take weeks to months. Google says some changes take effect in a few days, but it can take several months for its systems to confirm a site-wide improvement (Google).
- Annotate the fix date on the Performance chart (right-click > Add annotation) so the next report shows cause and effect.
Where the findings come from
Run the audit before you write the report. Our free Search Console checklist has 87 checks in 9 areas, each with the exact menu path, what good and bad look like, the fix and a priority. The priority column maps straight onto the P1 to P3 field in the finding card, and the notes column is where you paste the evidence.
How to use this with an AI assistant
Connect SEOmatic at https://seomatic.ai/mcp and ask: "Use SEOmatic on mysite.com. Run get_started, then gsc_performance compare_periods by page and gsc_indexing batch_inspect on my 20 top pages. Write each real problem as a finding card: finding, evidence, impact in clicks, cause, fix, owner, how we will know, priority." Reading your Search Console data is free once you sign in with connect_seomatic.